Before I dive into the topic of the title, I wanted to catch everybody up on a few things. Life has been ok here in Durango over the winter. We’ve finally had some good snow the past few weeks making my first winter in mountain town, well, feel like a winter in a mountain town. The white caps, snow covered fields, and cold air have been enjoyable. I’ve managed to find enough odd jobs to stay afloat. December and January were really tough on me financially, but I made it. I’m finally getting calls for interviews and finding other opportunities in my expertise, and I’m keeping the faith that some good paying work is right around the corner.

In times when I haven’t had work, I’ve found time to ski or go snowshoeing. Being a volunteer at the resort, I get a season lift ticket. I also get to take the employee shuttle for free. So, skiing actually doesn’t cost me anything. I found an old pair of telemark skis in the garage that work ok, and invested in a $40 pair of ski boots, and otherwise, I don’t have much more than that put in it. When you live in a ski town, you can ski pretty often for hardly any money at all-if you know how.

For those of you that don’t know what Telemark skiing is, it is sort of an old school way of getting down the mountain with less technologically advanced equipment. Your heel is not attached to the ski so you can bend your knees a lot more. To complete a turn you have to drop down into a lunge with one ski hanging back a little. It looks like this:

Telemark skiing is harder to learn than alpine skiing, takes more skill to excel at, and is generally a little more physically demanding since you are doing lunges all day, but man, it is a blast once you get it down and it looks damn cool too!

I’m not quite an “expert” at it yet, but maybe right below it. I can ski blacks with no problem and have even done some crazy double blacks. One bad thing about tele skiing is that it has turned me into a powder snob. Yes, you can ski on groomers and hard stuff, but fresh deep powder is where the real fun is at. It’s like floating on clouds. Unless we get 6” or more overnight, I don’t really feel like making the effort to get up to the slopes. This seems to be a universal problem with most tele skiers. Oh well, not skiing so much gives me time to look for work and get other things done, like writing this blog post.

One big event that happened here in Durango a few week back was Snowdown. This is a 34 year old winter festival originally started to help ease cabin fever. Nowadays, it is just an excuse for grown people to dress up in costumes, compete in silly competitions, and drink a lot of beer for 5 days straight. It started Wed Feb 1 and ran through Sun Feb 5 this year. They change the theme every year and this go round it was “Fairytales”. I decided to dress up as a hybrid Robin Hood. Most of my gittup looked pretty authentic-forest green top, leather belt, real leather armguards, a homemade leather quiver, leather boots, a homemade stickbow, and a pointy hat complete with feather. The part that made it hybrid was the brown leg tights. I have never had my ass grabbed so many times in my life as I did these 5 days of snowdown, nor have I ever felt so cold from pretty much wearing nothing (I was also commando I should point out). To say I didn’t enjoy being violated would be a bit of a lie, even if they were older, not so attractive women (most of them were not, luckily J )

I ended up competing in two competitions. The first one was a bike roller race on Wednesday evening. I hadn’t been in any serious athletic competition since Rocky Hill back in October, but I thought what the hell. No one there would know I was a former roller race champion, so there was zero expectation for a dominating performance.

This race was a little different than the one I won at Mellow Johnny’s a few years back. You could use whatever road bike you wanted, and the front wheel wasn’t fixed-you actually had to balance on the rollers. Heats lasted 15 minutes instead of 500 meters. Whoever pedaled the “farthest” was the winner. I very well could have done the thing on my road bike with 53×11 gearing (like all but 2 other people) and I maybe could have got decked out in spandex instead of cotton shorts and a t-shirt (like all but one other person)  but I wasn’t there to win it, I was there for style points. I outfitted the flat bar fixie with the tallest gear combo I had in my stash (53×16), threw on some SPD pedals and MTB shoes, and gave it all I had. Even with a pretty high cadence, I couldn’t match the distance of the higher geared riders. No matter, I looked good doing it. In addition to distance traveled in 15 minutes, they recorded average speed and max speed. When I had 10 seconds left, I revved it up to some ridiculous cadence to hit 50.6mph, good enough for third place in this category. I didn’t get a prize, but I got wicked respect from the crowd and fellow competitors.

It took a while and a few draws from the keg to recover and rehydrate, but once I did I went back home to change into my costume and from this point on I can’t say that I remembered too much for the next few days.

I did remember the next competition I entered, however. How could I forget such a manly and epic battle, not to mention one that I had been preparing for for 3 months to the day? It was none other than the Beard contest. At first, facial hair progression was slow, and all my friends kept telling me how competitive this contest was and that I didn’t stand a chance. Then, magically, secretly, I willed my beard to grow longer, faster, thicker-and it kinda worked. Come show time, I had a chance to size up the other 24 competitors who had also waited patiently since November 4^th when we had the “shave off”. I was pleasantly surprised by the lack of beard prowess-save for 2 or 3 gentleman who I immediately marked as the men to beat. What I might have lacked in their beard power, I made up for with devilish good looks, and a kick ass costume ( I should point out that all of the judges were female, and seemed more interested in my tights than in my beard) Still, they gave me high remarks on beard length, bushiness, and neck hair, and then proceeded to grab and slap my ass hard, just for good measure. I thought to myself, “I’ve got it in the bag now!”

After visual judging and groping ended, the true test of man’s beard commenced: the beer holding portion. A big bowl of beer was placed before us. We had 15 seconds to dip our beards in and out and empty them into a pint glass. The glasses were then weighed to produce a quantifiable metric to be scored with the judges marks. I didn’t win this division, but had a respectable 8.4 oz. After wrapping up these shenanigans, it was time for awards. There were 5 categories: longest beard, fullest beard, best neck hair, best color, and worst beard. On top of this, there was best overall beard.

Somehow they awarded me best color. I totally did not have the best color, but I didn’t quite have what it took to stand out in any of the other divisions, and the judges really liked my ass and so I think that is why they gave this one to me. Whatever, I was ready for the overall and felt good about my chances. Unfortunately, some old guy with a really nice thick salt and pepper beard took home the grand prize. I must admit, it was a nicer beard than mine. However, there is still some controversy on whether that guy showed up at the shave off  3 months prior. No one remembered seeing him there. His beard almost looked a little too good. I did get second place overall though, so I was pretty happy with that, especially for my first ever beard competition. Next year will be better.

Now, on to the title. You might have seen that tiger post I put up a few weeks ago, and something about “Beyond the Great Snow Mountains” What in the world could I possibly mean by all that mess? THIS IS WHAT I MEAN.

I know I said I would take 1-2 years off from racing, but @#*! This is my own backyard. Terra Firma, the fine folks that put on 12 Hours of Warda, 24 Hours of Rocky Hill, and a lot of other cool adventure races in Texas is actually bringing a race up here! When Zoe Nance of Zoefitness showed me the link to this race, I immediately felt that old flame roar up that has been dormant since October. I tried to reason with myself and say there was no way I could afford it, no way I could find the time to train, and ask myself if I was really ready to do another race, not to mention one of this caliber. No matter how hard I tried to convince myself not to do it , I just couldn’t.

Now, before you get too excited, I’m not going to return to racing full time or get as serious about it as I have been in the past, but to say that I’m not a bike racer is big pile of you-know-what. Who am I kidding? Of course I’m a mountain bike racer, and a pretty good one when I want to be. There is a passion in every mountain bike racer, be it a novice Cat 3 beginner, or a seasoned Pro. It’s just there. You can’t deny it. Trying to suppress such a thing is like trying to suppress sex, and that’s just not healthy. So you heard it from me here, I will be doing at least one race in 2012, and it’s going to be epic. And if you had any doubt whether I’ll be choosing the 7 day tour or the 2 day epic, well, there shouldn’t be any doubt. If you are going to think, you might as well think BIG.

Training has already started. I have a long, long journey ahead of me, but I am looking forward to it like no other adventure I have ever prepared for. There will be a lot of weakness leaving the body, there will be lots of riding, there will be pain, there will be joy, there will be racin’. Hope some of my Texas friends can make it up. I’d love for you to see one of the main reasons I moved here. If you do come to race, you might try to borrow an extra pair of lungs, and climbing legs. Colorado riding doesn’t mess around. Til next time.

Caveman

 

PS if you didn’t catch the Louis L’Amour reference, the mountains here are packed with snow right now, so not only will the snow have to melt off before I go beyond them, but Moab is what actually lies beyond the great snow mountains. Looking forward to it!